Book Design

Those of you who have been following this blog for some time know that I’m, more or less, a one man operation. I write the books/stories, I do the interior formatting for both e-books (Kindle, Smashwords) and print books, I design the covers, and stuff like that.

What you don’t know is that sometimes I do these things for other writers. It’s not something I’ve been advertising, so I don’t have an impressive portfolio, but let me show you my latest work.

I use Createspace for all my books, simply because the production cost is significantly lower than Lulu (which in turn means cheaper author copies, higher royalties, and a lower price on Amazon.com and other retailers.)

Overall, the quality of the paper and cover, the binding, all that is really good.

The paperback’s interior formatting. I chose Adobe Jenson as the font for the text, while chapter headers are typeset in Adobe Devanagari. Also, I used a nice glyph to mark text breaks within a certain chapter.

To be honest, I do enjoy this type of work. Sometimes I design covers for books I have yet to begin writing. That way I get motivated… strange thing.

I love the cover design and the premise sounds intriguing! I know you aren't supposed to "judge a book by a cover" but a nicely done bound book with a great cover will cause me to pull it off the shelf every time.

I love your cover!!!! I also write, format, and design my own books. I think if you can write it, you see it in your head a certain way, and then you can design it the way you want it. Beautiful work. Good luck to you.

I love that cover design! Good work! I've done my own book cover as well, I've just been slow to unveil it or post much of anything because I've been so consumed with finishing the story up. Anyway, I understand the whole "designing the cover before the book's started" too, that's definitely a good method of motivation and inspiration! Hope you share more of these in the future!

I am just curious about cost etc that you charge. I am in the works on writing a book and I have no experience with any of the logistics. Honestly all I want to do is write it and than let someone put it together for amazon etc or kindle etc. I am thinking a 150 page book. I have a ways to go, but certainly would love input.

For a full package like this, meaning print and e-book covers, interior formatting for Createspace, KDP, and Smashwords, and to handle all the procedures (setting up the titles, uploading the files, etc.) I charge a flat fee of $200.

Thank you Cristian. I am in the process of putting together a book. It may take 6 months but now that I know you have the skills that I really do not have, I am more inspired to get this book done. When you get the final product from me, how long does it take you to format etc ? I am in no hurry ..Just wondering what your timing is like with these kind of projects?

Beautiful work! I know what you mean– I have graphic design experience too, and sometimes I create a visual for a story or article before I've written it. And sometimes it's a title that comes to me first, and the writing goes from there. Interesting that it's not always a predictable, linear process. But then, that's probably what keeps me inspired.